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Happy Thoughts

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Today’s post comes from Trail Baboon’s Living and Loving correspondent B. Marty Barry.

I just want to take a moment here to congratulate everyone who hates hates hates hates winter. You know who you are – you’re the person who sees the months of November through March as a miserable ordeal that must be endured.

I’ve been having some extra sessions lately with my clients who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I’m more-than-usually attuned to the plight of the light-starved and warmth-hungry among us. The cold, the ice, the darkness, the Super Bowl – all of it is an affront to your senses.

Here’s the good news. You’ve almost cleared January!

January is the worst month of the year by far. All of January’s excitement happens at the beginning and then it’s dreary and painful and endless. January is ten times longer and fifty times nastier than any other month.

If the months of the year were all assigned a planet, January would be Jupiter. Big and cold, heavy with gravity and gas, marred by an unsightly blot that turns out to be a permanent storm. Blah! No wonder people find it oppressive.

Well all that awfulness is about to come to an end – tomorrow is the first of February! February is a giddy sprint by comparison – it’s groundhogs, hearts, presidents and kaput. Blink and it’s over. Then we’re into March, the leprechauns come out, and suddenly the end is in sight.

So smile because it’s January 31st! The end is nigh. It’s true we still have to endure the Super Bowl, but by Monday afternoon that will be forgotten and then it’s clear sailing! Before you know it we’ll have April flowers, May showers, June blooms, July fireworks, August fairs, September leaves …

But I’m getting too far ahead of myself. My message today is to enjoy this moment and smile, even if it happens to be horribly, perversely cold! And if you can’t smile, that’s OK too. Maybe your face is frozen. Maybe you’ve discovered that buying more assault weapons doesn’t perk you up the way you hoped it would. I’m not here to judge or to impose anything on you – I just want to cheer you to the furthest extent that you can be cheered, and not a single smile more.

But if you’re having trouble coping, think about Jim Nabors. He just got married to the love of his life and he’s 82! Doesn’t that warm your heart? His too-long wait for a change in status has finally come to an end. He also lives in Hawaii, but try not to think about that part of it. But if you do anyway and you’re still sad, remember that you’re not a failure. Your seasonal malaise may be justified but it doesn’t define you.

Not in my eyes, anyway. Because although I’ve never met you, I care about you very, very, very much.

Your friend and (I hope) confidant,
B. Marty Barry

What makes you happy when you know it’s finally over?

50 thoughts on “Happy Thoughts”

  2. Good morning. I am not as good at enduring the winter months as I was in the past. I do look forward to the end of cold weather, although I am not one of those people that need the help of B Marty in dealing with some of the negative effects of winter.

    I hate to mention that tax season is coming up. That is a season that I will be glad to see come to an end. When I did my own taxes and was running a small business, tax season nearly did me in every year. Now I have my taxes done professionally. Also, I no longer have business taxes that need to be paid.

    There are still are all the tax records and other papers that need to be collected and put in order and there is always some complication that arises. Papers get lost, there may be new paper work needed due to changes I have made or changes in the tax laws, and who knows what I might be missing that is needed by the person doing my taxes. I will certainly be glad when I have managed to get all the needed records into the hands of the woman that does my taxes and will be very glad when she hands me my completed tax forms.

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  3. Flu, committee meetings, Inlaw visits, republican rule, divorce, catholic school, plane trips to china, my leg being asleep, hangover, surgery, impending doom, morning sit ups, one to mind first. I’ll kepp working on it

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    1. That is quite a few things, tim. Impending doom? Will that ever come to an end? I guess you might mean too much talk about impending doom or maybe too much preoccupation with impending doom. I certainly wish I could be less preoccupied with impending doom and I am sure some people wish that I would not have so much to say about it. By the way there are big problems that most people are ignoring. Oh! there I go again. I can’t stop myself.

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      1. on the other hand, I am not so sure the actual arrival of doom is something preferable. Actual doom might seem to last a very long time indeed.

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  4. Dental cleanings and any music written in 12-tone. Also TPT pledge week (somehow more painful that MPR pledging – it seems to interrupt the schedule more and generally involves replaying shows I find painful to watch).

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  6. Morning all. I actually dislike February more than January. In December, winter hasn’t set in and everyone is distracted by the holidays; January just seems like the beginning of winter to me. But by February, you’ve had a good four weeks of cold and know that you still have a ways to go.

    I’m not crazy about paying bills – it’s not an awful job, but it does put the spotlight on my financial situation, which is on the edge of grim most months. I put it off as long as I possible can (sometimes too long) and then always feel greatly relieved when I’m finished!

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    1. Personally, I find March really challenging, because I never know what to expect. I like winter, but by March, I get anxious for green things to be coming up, and the slop and mess and often last minute messy storm that freezes off the top of my emerging rhubarb can be a real downer. I want to get excited about things coming up, but I’m always fearful of that last blast wrecking the whole thing.

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      2. I was on the high school track team one year, and my event was running the mile. That was four laps of our cinder-paved outdoor track. One of the things I learned was that the most awful part of running the mile is the third lap. By the time you have run two laps, you are in as much pain as you will get to in that run. You would like to shut your eyes and kick it as fast as you could go to sprint to the finish line, only when you are in the third lap you still have another whole lap to survive, so you need to pace yourself (physically and mentally) to suffer through lap three and then cut loose with all you have in the fourth lap.

        February is the Third Lap of winter.

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        1. I also ran the mile on a high school track time for one year. I probably didn’t run as hard as you did, Steve, because I was still doing okay when I reached the halfway mark and I would tell myself if I had made it half way, I shouldn’t have any trouble doing the remaining half. I did run hard enough to be very happy and not in great shape when I finally make it to the finish line. There weren’t very many people on our track team or on the teams we ran against who wanted to run the mille. I could usually managed to earn a point or two for our team, but was far from being a good miler. February would be the final lap for me.

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    2. Yeah, I remember a week of -20 weather and snow in February. 1997, Daughter was less than a year old and had a serious cold; was in NICU, Kelly was staying at the hospital and it was -43 at our house; a record. So cold an owl spent the night in the garage.
      And some idiot tried to go 4 wheeling with his pick up in a field. And got stuck. And walked into the barn while I was milking asking for help. He was lucky I could get a tractor started to pull him out. And it cost him too.
      I’m more than willing to help you if you get stuck. But if you get stuck because you’re an idiot, then it costs more. 🙂

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  9. The end of the Month-End Posting process on our antiquated computer system. Our software is about 16 years old (at a Fortune 1000 company!). Every month, someone needs to get up at about 2:00am to start the month-end process and babysit it until it’s done at about 8:30. There are 3 of us who share this responsibility but one has diabetes and can’t afford the lost sleep so he only does it when it falls on a weekend.
    So it’s down to 2 of us who handle mid-week month ends and tonight it’s my turn. It used to be that the person could call it a day after a couple additional hours of work but my boss did it one time and kept working for the rest of the day. Because of that precedent, I feel that I’d be a slacker if I left early just because I’d been up all night.
    So, I’ll be happy when it’s over at 8:30 tomorrow but even happier when the DAY is over at 5:30.

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      1. There is monitoring and it should/does let us know if there’s a problem. But I still like to check every 30 minutes or so. Sometimes, I will take a series of 30 minute naps. Not great sleep but maybe better than nothing.

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    1. I spent a large part of last summer putting a second layer of shingles on the roof of my house to cover old ones that were not in good shape. I was very happy about finishing that home improvement project.

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  11. I am grateful I have not had to experience this for a long time, but I think waiting for the results of just about any medical test is one of the biggest slowers of the clock I can think of.

    It would be a stretch to say one is always “happy” when that wait is over, but there is something to be said for at least having information to act on, for good or ill.

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      1. hoping I did not give the wrong impression here. Not waiting for any test results at the moment, this is from long past experience. For any Baboons who currently find themselves in this situation (and I think there are probably some), I wish you all good news and the speedy delivery thereof.

        As song says, the waiting is (sometimes) the hardest part.

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  13. Any dental procedure. Waiting for husband to decide what to get in the grocery store when he is tired, (has trouble making up his mind). sermons by conservative pastors, annual work evaluations, staff meetings, yearly training in fire safety, cybersecurity, tornado, bomb threat, or violent patient, staff inservices on personal wellness and nutrition.

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    1. I forgot one: therapy in play therapy room with child who I know has to go to the bathroom but denies need to go to bathroom and farts the whole session.

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  14. I just got a federal jury call for 9/2013 to 8/2015. Shall I hold my breath? This is the third time I have had this notice in 10 years but never been called. I did file an exemption as a sole care-giver. But they do not tell you if they grant it. Five years after we moved from Two Harbors to Mankato I was called for federal court in Duluth. The last two times it has been for Mpls.

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    1. I’ve been put on notice for jury duty twice. The second time I was on call, but didn’t end being called. The first time I did serve, but the case was thrown out and the jury, including me, was dismissed. I was okay with having a chance to learn about jury duty and get dismissed and I am glad they didn’t call me in the second time. It was a happy ending both times.

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      1. This is federal, in Mpls, which would be a big deal for me to have to go to. A county court would be all right. I was called in Nicollet county a few years ago and ran into a judge who was just a little over the top . . . or a lot over the top. Only got called in once and then lawyers messed it all up so he called us in and chewed us out for 25 minutes.

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  15. Next week hauling up a bunch of books to 1/2 Price Books: lots of cookbooks, many travel books, complete set of Cadfael in paperback. I will trash out all 18 of the yearbooks I advised. All our CD’s are going. Sigh. Anyone know the best place to sell a 150 CDs or so?

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  16. Unless you want to go through the trouble of selling them individually, or donating the lot to your library, I think Cheapo Discs might be your best bet.

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